All The Pretty Little Horses
by Licorice-Sama
Summary: Two vignettes that may multiply, regarding a certain romance that spawned a certain redheaded tyrant-child. Simply writing for writing's sake, as Brenda Miller would say.
1. Default Chapter

All the Pretty Little Horses

By: Licorice-Sama

Leia had been dreaming about the mobile suits again. Bulky, mechanical, and in long, straight rows all down the streets of the colony. She didn't want to get up from the bed, dark with shadows from the French doors. But the baby wouldn't strop crying, and the sharp bursts of air echoed in Leia's ears, pounding with the pain in her head, making her aware of her stuffy nose. Sniffling, the brunette rose from her bed.

Leia made her way to the bassinet, looked down at her daughter. Already the baby had a full head of auburn hair. The baby's eyes were shut tight against the darkness, and her mouth was open, toothless gums exposed like an old convict's. Leia picked the baby up, feeling the wailing increase and she held the baby close to her bosom. The child's pale, smooth skin was warm. Leia's chest rose and fell with a sigh.

"Shh... hush, my Mariemeia. Hush, my dearest," Leia said in a voice distorted by the mucus in her nose and at the back of her throat. The baby quieted, but didn't stop crying. The darkness was arms around the two; the warmth keeping them in the shadows. Lamplight from outside sent odd patterns of silver-white and black spilling over the wood floor and the oriental rug Leia stood on. The light shone on Mariemeia's head against Leia's shoulder, her white, silk peignoir soft against the baby's rosy cheek. Mariemeia was only whimpering now, and Leia began to walk her around the room in a slow circle.

"Treize, do you know about her? What would you want of her, if you did?" Leia whispered. Mariemeia gave another splutter of wails, then was nearly quiet. Leia readjusted the way her hand cradled the nape of her baby's neck, the back of the head.

Leia remembered how angry her father, Dekim, had been when he found out she was pregnant. She remembered the yelling, the slap across the face, the months of silent agony as her father ignored her existence. He refused to take meals with her, and when in the same room he would turn away from her, address others, or read. She had been so upset during the pregnancy. She had been too drained to find Treize, or to tell him.

Leia frowned at the muffled resonance of her voice as she found herself singing Mariemeia a lullaby.

"Hush-a-by, don't you cry   
Go to sleep little baby.   
When you wake, you will take   
All the pretty little horses."

Leia began murmuring to herself, looking out the French doors, past the balcony, and at the streets of the colony. The same streets that in her dreams were filled with mobile suits.

"Treize, your father, was a soldier. No, he is a soldier. And he is gaining rank, and he will have the influence, the position he so desperately craves," she murmured to the child.

Leia's mouth closed, and she lifted her head. Her eyes glistened in the shadows, and she backed to the bed. She lay down, and she laid the now-sleeping baby next to her on the bed.

"Treize will never know about her," Leia said quietly, "his influence, his position... no. He'll change my dearest. She won't be a child if he knows her. She would be his Ideal."

Leia turned over to watch her sleeping baby girl. She smiled at the auburn down on Mariemaia's head, and her peaceful face. She stroked the knuckle of her forefinger against her baby's supple cheek. Leia smiled. She closed her eyes. She shuddered at the image of mobile suits behind her eyelids.

_ When you wake, you will take   
All the pretty little horses. ..._

FINIS

Disclaimer: Don't own Gundam Wing or related characters, just abusing them for personal enjoyment. I feel like such a pimp.

Un Petit Nota Bene: Oh god this was forced. This was REALLY forced. Tee-hee, can ya tell? Can ya? . Anyway, did you like it or hate it? Was it sentimental, cliché, didactic or politically incorrect? Any constructive criticism would gladly be appreciated. So review. And If you don't have any constructive criticism, review anyway. No flames, please. And none of that "I like it!" crap either. You have a whole palette of material at your disposal right in front of you, right now, you're reading it! Don't tell me you can't think of anything other that "I loved it!" No! I'm not reading it to you aloud! It doesn't work that way!


	2. In a Sentimental Mood

In a Sentimental Mood.

By: Licorice-Sama 

Treize was lying in his bed, staring at the light that fell through the glass doors. Through them, a long balcony lined the façade of his family's retreat here in Verdun. His gaze did not move, and he lay with his head to his side, broad chest naked and exposed to the waist. The blankets were caught around his middle.

It was a warm night, and the perspiration lying warm and beaded on Treize's forehead and chest were evidence of that.

The silence in the room reminded him of the night he awoke to rain in a colony hospital. It was after his MS was hit by a kid with a beam cannon. He remembered the feel of the cotton bandages against his forehead, the thin, paper feeling of his hospital gown, and the nurse with soft, curling brown hair.

He had inquired about the rain to the nurse, just a girl really, and she had told him the situation.

_What an incompetent_, he had said of the leader of the colony, who had made it rain to extinguish a small fire.

_I agree_, she had replied. Her brown eyes watched him as he laid back against the white pillow that felt to be stuffed with only the thinnest layers of quilt batting. He much preferred the overstuffed feather pillows he lay against now.

All the bedding here was white, too. Well, it was that country white color they called cream that you always imagined to be in a chateau like this. Treize stared at the light on the rug before the balcony. One of the glass doors was open and he could smell the Russian Olives bordering the expanse of pastureland, and the honey lotus beneath the balcony.

He remembered the short flirtation he shared with Leia during his recuperation. Remembered the walks they would go on when he was able to leave the hospital bed. With such a simple political statement as that he had made when injured, the two began sharing kisses before she went home for the night. Their walks sometimes ended with his hands up her blouse and his mouth tracing the line of her neck, the lobe of her ear, or running his hands through her soft, thick brown curls.

_I can't tell you I love you_, she said one evening, when he walked her back to her room in Barton's mansion.

_I wouldn't dream of it_, he said with a slight curl of his lips, his eyes so very blue in the soft light of the hall. Leia smiled. She was wearing a navy blue dress with a white sailor's collar, and a barrette with a line of small, freshwater pearls pulled back the hair on the right side of her face. He felt a shiver ripple over her smooth, olive skin as he reached over to hold her hand.

_ I suppose it would only be polite to ask you in for a glass of wine_? she said with a lift of exquisitely arched eyebrows. Treize heard Duke Ellington playing in the parlor downstairs. He didn't lose that smile. A few strands of gingery hair hung loosely over his brow.

_ I wouldn't want to impose_, Miss Barton. He brought her hand up and kissed it.

_Oh, never! Please,_ she had said in a whisper, _I want you to stay_. Treize reached over to the drawer of his black walnut nightstand. He opened it, pulled something out, and shut the drawer. He slid down to his previous position, looking at the ceiling, and held his prize in front of his face. It was a silver barrette lined with tiny pearls that shone almost opalescent in the moonlight coming to him with the scent of honey lotus and Russian Olive trees.

"Leia," he whispered. He closed his eyes and remembered the way he had held her that night as she slept. She clung to his side like a child; her long eyelashes resting on full cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. She was barely seventeen. He was barely seventeen, himself. He had fallen asleep that night with the lingering thought that he had corrupted something that he shouldn't have, but for the life of him he couldn't force himself to care.

He had begun to worry, however, when he returned to the front. Not that there was time to think when you were suppressing colonial rebellion with the business end of a beam cannon-wielding MS, but he worried anyway.

_We used no protection_, he thought once during an interminable meeting with the Romefeller Foundation, _I may have impregnated the girl. And I was her first, too. I must find her, I must make sure she's not pregnant. I have a duty to her if she is_.

But Treize never did call the girl. He thought about the way his hands had tangled in her soft brown hair, but he never put thought to paper and sent it to her. 

_The mail service is bugged anyway_, he told himself,_ I don't want the tabloids finding this out. I'll never gain any rank if they do_.

A week after his epiphany, the young soldier was called away to officer's training outside of Koblenz, and was consequently cut off from the outside world. As soon as training was complete, he received orders to purge a group of rebels on one of the outlying colonies of the Earth Sphere. He soon forgot about ever getting in touch with Leia. It seemed that every chance he got something kept pulling him away. With all the months of training, and fighting, and peacekeeping, and with hours of droning meetings, and vapid military balls, he soon lost the will to even attempt contact.

However, Leia's barrette he held now was carried always in the inside pocket of his uniform jacket, and every few months he would be awakened by a dream of the way Leia's hair had fallen around his face that night before he left. The way her lips felt against his before they drifted off to sleep. He wondered often, during meetings, if she had become pregnant. Had she terminated the pregnancy? Kept the child? Put it up for adoption?

Treize shook his head.

"Leia, I'm sorry."

He rolled over onto his side and slipped an arm under the feather pillow. He closed his eyes. Duke Ellington swept back to him, and he felt he was in the hallway again with Leia. He heard the sensual melody on clarinet, and felt her hand in his. Treize smiled.

_In a sentimental mood,  
I'm within a world so heavenly,  
For I never dreamt that you'd  
Be loving sentimental me_. 

.:FINIS:. 

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise. "In a Sentimental Mood" is by Duke Ellington. I'm not making any money off of this; I have non-fan fiction works for that, if I so desired, and this was only meant as a bit of fun. So don't sue me, cos I'm poor.

Author's Note: Aw, come on! Don't tell me Treize and Leia's scene in Episode ZERO didn't just reek of Hemingway! chants: It's not just in my head, it's not just in my head… Anyway, Did you like it? Hate it? Did it help to fill in the holes the first vignette left? Read & Review, please, so I can Rant & Revise. .  
Luvs and Such, Licorice-Sama  



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